


Ghost Story

by Unreal_Kitty



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Bittersweet, Epilogue, F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 14:01:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15996674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unreal_Kitty/pseuds/Unreal_Kitty
Summary: Ghosts are possibilities. And like all things yet to happen, they exist in several places at once.Edith writes the final chapter of her book. She contemplates its genre, and finds an appreciative — and familiar — audience.





	Ghost Story

Ghosts are real, that much I know. I've seen them all my life. But I never thought I'd see my own, staring back at me from behind a veil of snow. 

I hobbled away from the ruins, but still, I left that ghost behind. She allowed the winter wind to carry her back to the Hall to join the rest. A cluster of imprints gathered in the sitting room. I expect she will join him there, amid decaying fabric and snowfall.

She is the note that will never be played, the key that will never be pressed. But not the story that will never be written, I will see to that. No matter what it costs me, I will see to that. 

I have paid in blood and not all of it mine. I have sold the last shreds of my childhood, and torn the maiden's mantel from my shoulders. Ink is cheap. I dare the universe to extort more.

It may take my cramped fingers. My frostbitten feet. It may take my fear — I've had my fill. 

But it may not have my love. My love, which I press tenderly between the pages of this impossible story. This ghost story. 

I have not written a tragedy. I have not survived a tragedy. I have lived a romance. Tragedy is but one of many characters. Just another ghost. 

In the end, I left with more than I lost. I left a trail of bloody footsteps in the snow. A fountain pen. That poor little dog. Buffalo, New York. With Alan at my side or not, I don't care to return. After everything, I can't bear to stuff myself into the familiar rhythms of that place. Like forcing a line into a paragraph, where it sits awkwardly, uneasily. No matter how you dress up the words, it will not fit. 

And that is all I lost. 

I mean that, truly. 

Ghosts are real, but they don't walk with us. They don't live in decaying houses. Ghosts are possibilities. And like all things yet to happen, they exist in several places at once. 

Alan limped past the gates with me, yes, but he was not alone. Thomas gently rested his arm in mine, even as he watched us leave from the distant window in the attic nursery. My father walked a little behind us, giving us the illusion of privacy. Then mother took his hand, and they were just another couple in the snow. 

Lucille clutched the piano leg with an iron grip in the parlor, even as my mind dragged her out of the house. Her beloved, loathed house. She trailed behind our party, like a cat rebelling against an ill-advised leash. I didn't want her there, but I had little choice in the matter. We shared a house once, shared a ring, even shared a man's love. And now, we would share eternity, tethered to each other. Where I would go, she must follow. Where I would write, she would rise from a red clay grave. 

But I will not begrudge her. If I must forever suffer her haunting, so be it. That's the price of my husband's pale hand in mine. And his whisper in my ear drowns out the pounding of her piano and the echo of her wail. 

A motley band surround her, always, keeping her from causing too much trouble. Red and black specters like sentinels. Like angels. 

I've seen ghosts all my life. But never in such numbers. I abandoned my phantom reflection to drift in a decaying house. And left with a spectra horde in tow. 

Let my story exorcise us all. 

—Edith Cushing Sharpe 

\------

Edith put down her pen. She closed her eyes with a sigh as weary as the winter wind. It wasn't quite finished. The edges remained uneven and rough. It still required sanding and polishing before she could send it off. 

But she couldn't write any more today. She felt exposed, like an automaton with the gears on display. Her mind felt clogged with crimson clay. It had not been an easy story to write. 

Not with all the voices behind her, competing for a chance to share their version of the story. Her life through other eyes. Her heart and her memory bolstered and buffeted by waves of coauthors. But she needed to include all of them. They all deserved their place in the story. Many had died for the chance to be heard. 

For she had not written a fairytale, though her story might seem fantastical. She had written a ghost story. And ghosts were real, as she kept insisting. That much she knew. 

They were real and true and needed a place in the world, just like everyone else. She couldn't save them in life. She couldn't turn back time and warn her father to flee the clubhouse wash room. She couldn't protect Thomas from his sister's darkness and his sister's knife. And she couldn't save Lucille from herself. 

All she could do is tell their story. Their ghost story.

Her readers would be skeptical. A ghost story with a romance. A love story with the fantastic dead. 

She smiled a half smile and shook her head. All true stories were ghost stories, she thought. What were stories, after all, if not a means of summoning ghosts? Authors, necromancers, they were one and the same, raising the dead from memory. Transfiguring them into something a bit sturdier. 

She thought of the photographs she had found, figures captured in black and white. Thomas and Pamela. Thomas and Margaret. Thomas and Enola. There would be no photograph of Thomas and Edith. Although she, too, had left a ghost behind in that house. And taken it with her. 

Her book would be her photograph. The readers would, like Alan with his spirit photography, find the ghosts. 

A shadow appeared over the pages and startled her from her thoughts. 

She turned her head to catch Thomas in the act of trying to read over her shoulder. He flashed her a sheepish smile. 

"I like it," he said. A whisper in her ear. "Though I suppose your 'story with a ghost' ended up a ghost story in the end." 

"It's not finished yet," she protested, gathering the papers. 

"No." He kissed her ear. A snowflake landing on exposed skin. "We're not."


End file.
